Frugal Fixin's

Our day started today at 4:50 am to the tune of the CO2 detectors going off when the power was briefly interrupted. Not too tragic as I had to get up at 5am anyway. Our two youngest kids were heading off to summer camp and we had to make the connection with their ride in Madison. They will be back Wednesday night so I've got to make the most of this time of fewer interruptions!

I came home and got going on the yard work. Lots of rain last week really set the weeds and grass to growing. After trimming some of the dying flowers and doing the weed whacking I managed to figure out the riding mower and get most of the major parts done with that. I use the push mower for the front, side, and back yard around the pool.

While mowing I realized that there was some produce that needed to be picked from the garden so that was next, since I was all hot and sweaty anyway! No reason to wait til tomorrow and be all grimy two days in a row! There was a 13x9 pan of beans ready, four zucchini, one tomato, and about 1 cup of raspberries. While I was out there the neighbor gave me a bunch of cucs. That was one thing I didn't plant. The picture above is the Sour Cream Cucumber Salad I made from the cucumbers and an onion that I got yesterday from another dear friend who provided our family with an abundance of fresh produce and fruit. I'm really trying to be more frugal and this free food came at a wonderful time!


We love to snack on the raw green beans so I'm not planning to can these.



Dinner was Teriyaki Chicken Wings. The wings were again provided free a little while back from someone who had extra and couldn't use them. I found a great recipe for them and they turned out great from the grill.


I had tried my mom's Lemon Zucchini bread last summer and loved it. When I found the four zucchini in the garden today I knew just the recipe for them! The bread got done just in time to have it for desert tonight. The little piece on top is all that is left of the third loaf that I made which we devoured as soon as it was cool enough to get out of the pan!



Now if we were truely living free and off the land we might just have gone hog wild for these "chicken" mushrooms! They are growing under the tree at a neighbor's house. There are five of these big monsters. We had some of them last year and though they are edible, they are a far cry from the luscious morels! I think I much prefer the wonderful blessings from generous friends and family who have shared their bounty with us!

Mariah bakes a cake

Mariah was bored while I was out shopping today and decided to make a cake. Problem was she couldn't find the right recipe. That meant that she needed to call me 13 times with questions. We (me) finally decided she should wait til I got home and do it together. I kept stalling hoping she would forget, but after dinner she announced it was time........

Ethan wasn't too sure about her cooking and opted for sherbet instead.

Wait....where did this bowl of ice cream in front of me come from?! She will bake a good cake. I'm sure of it.....well, just in case, let's go ahead and eat this ice cream.

See Mom? It really looks like cake batter and I did it all (mostly) myself!

Smooth it out just so.....

.....and of course lick out the bowl! That's why we bake you know!!

Looks perfect!

While the cake cools I'll whip up a batch of frosting, says Mariah!

What's this? She's actually washing the dishes too?

Hmmm.....not sure why that happened. Well, I guess that's why frosting was invented!

This is taking a long time. Two hours into this project and I had to take a little break.

Well what else are you going to do with all that cake on the bottom of the pan?! It actually goes well with the Merlot!

The cake has to cool before frosting it. Time for a few rounds of Guitar Hero!

Wow! Looks like a real cake now.

Now to add the artistic flair that we all expect from Mariah......

Ta da! I did it all my self!

Oh! That really looks nice, girly!

Of course the best part of cooking is licking the spoon! Now to get Mom to finish all the clean up...Why is it when the kids are bored mom's end up having way too much to do? Ah, but she practiced her math skills (fractions) and improved her baking so it is all good! I wonder what we will do tomorrow? Maybe a lemonade and cake stand in the front yard! She loves to bake but none of us really eat much cake!!!!

Baseball

My buttercup squash plants in the foreground and the zucchini in the back.

The tomatoes are as tall as Mariah!

Mariah checking for bugs in the raspberries.

The container I collect bugs in.

The very tiny frog I found on the raspberry leaf! Would have missed him if I wasn't looking closely for bugs!


Hmmm......since my last post we have spent a lot of time with Mariah for her ball games. She had a tournament over the weekend that she got to play two games of. There was one game Friday afternoon and another on Sunday afternoon. They lost the one Sunday so that put them out of the tournament. It was one of those deals where you continue playing until you loose. We had the potential to be at the ball diamond from 12:30 until 9:30pm! I hate to say it but I was kind of happy that they lost that first game (but don't tell her that!). It was good to get home and finish up some things yet on the weekend! Tonight is her final game of the season and I think we are all happy about this!

I threw together some things for a last minute garage sale with a friend last Thursday and for not having too much stuff and nothing much of big value Mariah and I did pretty good making close to $100 between us. She sold some toys and pop while I got rid of some clothes and some of Ken's odds and ends that he wanted to get rid of. One thing that didn't sell was a set of plastic goose decoys and I listed them Sunday for sale on ebay. They currently have 5 bids on them so by Friday they will be shipped off to the highest bidder!

Ken's been working away on one of the rental properties trying to tie up the final loose ends of that property and be able to get it up for sale. He tried to sell it last year, but I think the fact that there were some parts not finished up may have deterred people. It needed to get finished and he was able to get some help from a friend right now so this is the time to do it. Four hands will get it done faster than his two alone.

Tuesday has been my self designated day to work in the garden and flower beds. I seem to work best with a schedule so I just know that I get up and put on work clothes on Tuesdays. I started out picking off the bugs from the raspberries and then went ahead and picked the cup full of berries that were out there. I don't get very many at a time and have been freezing what I do pick so that at some point when I go to use them it will seem like a decent amount!

There were beans to pick as well as spinach and three little bitty zucchini. I cut them off early and small because it just seems like something is not quite right with the plants. Some of the little guys are turning yellow at about 2" long and getting rotten. I can't see any bugs or worms on the plants.

I went ahead and pulled weeds in the garden, which weren't too bad since I've been doing this almost every week since the garden started. I had sprinkled some coffee grounds out there last night and I needed to work that into the soil a little. I'm anxiously awaiting the first tomatoe! There are two that are finally red and I'll pick them on Thursday. There was a hint of paleness still today and I am so looking forward to that real, on the vine, tomatoe taste!

I took a break to watch "What not to Wear" and have a cup of coffee and it began to rain, so I guess the flower beds will have to wait til later. Since I have to stay in I'm catching up the laundry and making a batch of my favorite peanut butter cookies! The dough is chillin as we speak and should be ready soon. Yum!

I thought I would post some pictures of the garden. I know I've got some on here of the produce but none of the actual plot of ground they came from. Thanks Uncle Marv for tillin it up for me!

Berries and Bugs

I haven't had much to post since last week.......hence......no posts! Of course I picked more of the black raspberries and as of last night I've got 8 quarts of them and 1 quart of the red raspberries in the freezer. There are probably another quart or so out there, but I'm just getting tired of battling the mosquitoes for them!

Friends of ours got a new (to them) camper and were camping close to here so we spent Friday and Saturday evenings at the campground with them. They got a fabulous deal on the trailer and it's really nice inside. Perfect for their family of three to camp in. The third one in their group is their energetic dog! Our friend cooked up a great chicken dinner for 8 in her little camper kitchen and it turned out awesome. Who says you need a gourmet kitchen to whip up good food? It also sat 8 fairly comfortably inside while we ate said dinner so that we didn't have to consume mosquitoes in the food :-)

Ken got the truck fixed finally yesterday after about 5 days of working on it. Seems some of the bolts were rusted on and either broke of in the removal process or were so siezed up they wouldn't move. Finally he had success, fixed the problem, put everything back together without any spare parts leftover and even gave it a good washing last night. Yeah. So nice to get a major job finished.

We have a big walnut tree that grows along the neighbors driveway and over the years one of the limbs has grown at an odd angle outward instead of upward. It's grown it's way towards the pool and is casting many shadows on the cool waters. It is also a concern about it snapping off and causing problems and since we just went through the hassle of two limbs breaking off out back and the mess of that Ken has decided to be proactive and take off that limb. After finishing up the truck he went out back to get his lift so he could saw off the limb and low and behold......another problem! If you remember, the first big limb that broke out back landed across the lift.......well it looked ok cosmetically, but for some reason a wheel had siezed up and wouldn't go forward. It WOULD go backward though, so Ken managed to drive it backwards through the yard and into the driveway so he could work on it. If it's not one thing it's another.

So for the bugs part of this post.......Last Thursday when I went out to pick raspberries I noticed a few of the Japanese beetles on the plants. There didn't seem to be very many and they were kind of colorful to look at. I really paid them no mind. Then on Sunday when I went out to pick again I noticed that lots of the leaves were chewed and almost lace like in appearance. Also, the bug population had increased! This seemed to indicate that bugs eat the leaves and that didn't make me too happy so I got a dish of soapy water and shook off into it what bugs I could get. There were probably 15 or so that I got and more that fell away into the grass. Today I was ready for the bugs and took my soapy water out with me to the raspberry patch. Before I stared picking I went through the patch and collected as many bugs as I could. Pictured here was today's collection. They went peacefully. No humans were harmed while photographing the bugs. You might not want to borrow my tweezers any time soon, though.

Living off the Land

I have tried to work out my schedule so that Tuesday is my day for working in the garden and doing general outside, getting sweaty, stuff. It wasn't too bad out this morning since there was a little breeze blowing. I spent awhile cleaning the pool and doing some of the maintenance on it. It was a little low on water and was pretty dirty from so much use over the weekend. It's all clean and sparkly now :-) The only thing that still needs to be done is for someone to swim to the bottom and pick up the quarter and two pennies that I noticed on the bottom! A couple people jumped in the pool fully clothed Saturday and apparently lost a little change.

I went out to weed the garden today and decided that some of the spinach was ready to be picked. I also noticed a few beans and zucchini, but I'll let them go two days longer and get a bit bigger. On my way back to the house I checked the red raspberries and saw there were a good handful or two to pick so I took the spinach in and brought out a bowl for picking. There was apparently a new hatching of mosquitoes in the last 24-48 hours and they made it miserable for the short 5-10 minutes I was at the raspberry patch. I knew I couldn't get around all the black raspberries with them like that so I went in and put on Ken's mosquito net shirt that he uses on trips to Canada!

It took some getting used to wearing that shirt/hat combo. The mosquitoes were ALL over my head and the buzzing and humming made me a little nervous, but the shirt worked and I was able to really get deep into the berry patch to do a good picking. It's kind of like the first time or two scuba diving-you just have to relax and realize that your equipment is doing what it's supposed to do! After about 1/2 hour in the woods I just couldn't stand the buzzing all around and came in. I don't know how the guys could stand a week of that in Canada! I think I would literally lose my mind!

Dinner tonight will be spinach salad with chicken and I'm thinking that the red raspberries would be good in a margarita!

July 4th, 2009

What a fun couple of days the last two have been! It's always a bit of work getting ready for company and this time "company" meant about 40 people here on Saturday for dinner and a fireworks show! Ken and I had company staying with us from Eureka, IL and Josh and Ethan had friends over Friday for a campfire and then again Saturday afternoon and overnight. Thankfully not all 40 of those people stayed overnight!!!

We enjoyed the parade, even though it rained the whole time, and Mariah made out like a bandit with all the candy that was thrown to her! It wasn't as long a parade as in past years and perhaps the weather played a part in that.

We shared a nice potluck dinner with family and friends in the house while all the young(er) people cooked their own over the campfire outside.

About 9pm the boys were ready for their grand fireworks show that they had been planning for a couple months. Josh, Ethan, and four friends staged an amazing, 20 minute fireworks show, complete with music, for our enjoyment! No one was hurt and the high they got from a successful show will be with them for quite some time! I hear now that Josh and the other guy who is over 21 are planning to get their license to do this legally for large groups! I told Josh to buy life insurance now while he can still get it!!!

I hope that wherever you celebrated the birth of our incredible country you took a moment to thank God for the blessing of living in this land.

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Fourth Festivities

As I sit here tired from a day of preparation for the weekend my mind is wandering to this nation in which I live that allows me the freedom to write what I want, practice the religion that I want, get the education that I want and reap the incredible blessings that come from living in a nation that has been blessed by God for so long. I know that these blessings and freedoms are gradually being taken away as our nation moves away from God, but for now at least, we still have peace and relative safety. Thank God.

We are looking forward to a good 4th weekend here. We have friends staying here from out of town and the older boys currently have a half dozen friends over for a cookout and campfire. They've laid all the groundwork for their fireworks display tomorrow night and within 24 hours we will see if their plans worked out! I can hear outside that some of the neighbors have gotten a jump on the festivities!

Have a wonderful 4th of July.